By hacks, I don’t mean cheats, I mean clever ideas that work within the framework of the game.
For instance, take a short stave, secure a metal cone with a removable lid to one end, and cast Permanent Light on that end. Instant flashlight.
One hack which I understand did get outlawed because it was a near game-breaker was to have a magic-user cast a portal spell in such a way that it bisected whatever monster you were facing, causing instant death. Or opened a portal within a fortified castle to the, say, Marianas Trench, drowning all the defenders. Not cricket, gentlemen, but still awesome.
Wooden cube, about softball sized, with cont. ligh on itt.
Throw it, & it will settle in place.
A wooden or leather ball, with cont. light on it, can be rolled down a hall. It illuminates, and lures out attackers.
Technically, the Stone to Flesh spell doesn’t specify that it only works on magically petrified creatures. You could cast it on natural stone and turn it into… ham?
Wagon full of arrows or bolts; wand of greater magic weapon with a high caster level (which can enchant 50 arrows or bolts per casting). Yes, it’s expensive, but giving weapons a +5 bonus for 20 hours is nothing to sneeze at. Add a Telekinesis spell. The violent thrust option. I quote from the D&D 3.5 SRD :
"Violent Thrust
Alternatively, the spell energy can be spent in a single round. You can hurl one object or creature per caster level (maximum 15) that are within range and all within 10 feet of each other toward any target within 10 feet per level of all the objects. You can hurl up to a total weight of 25 pounds per caster level (maximum 375 pounds at 15th level).
You must succeed on attack rolls (one per creature or object thrown) to hit the target with the items, using your base attack bonus + your Intelligence modifier (if a wizard) or Charisma modifier (if a sorcerer). Weapons cause standard damage (with no Strength bonus; note that arrows or bolts deal damage as daggers of their size when used in this manner). Other objects cause damage ranging from 1 point per 25 pounds (for less dangerous objects) to 1d6 points of damage per 25 pounds (for hard, dense objects). "
You just hurled several thousand projectiles at whatever, critically hitting on several, for 1d4+5 points of damage (or 2d4+10 on a crit) per pop. Got a pesky lesser deity in your way? As long as their DR isn’t epic (and for most Deities, it isn’t, since that sourcebook was printed before the ELH) you’ve got yourself one very dead god.
Absolutely. A guy I knew once ran a vampire-themed aventure drawing inspiration from the World of Darkness - one of the bad guys had an entire castle made out of meat, only some of which was screaming people (which he’d integrate into the construction via Flesh to Stone => Stone to Mud => use as mortar or whatever => Mud to Stone => Stone to Flesh).
What can I say, vampires get bored and they have a lot of free time.
Cast continual light on an arrowhead.
Cast continual darkness on the fletching.
Assemble arrow.
Give arrow to non-mage troops.
Shoot bad guy/ground near bad guy.
The buried arrowhead no longer produces light, leaving slightly more than a hemisphere of darkness.
Breaks up enemy formations a treat…and a great force multiplier - a small group of relatively low level mages/clerics could outfit a troop with dozens of these things months in advance of any battle.
Doesn’t work in 3rd or later due to “shadowy illumination” rather than actual darkness.
Doesn’t work; You’d have a arc of darkness attached to every arrow where the darkness on the fletching extended past the light from the head, which would screw things up on your side as well. Unless you’re trying to say that when you assemble the arrow it becomes one “object” for purposes of the spells, in which case, burying the head wouldn’t do anything.
Honestly, I always kinda hated stuff like this. It destroys any sense of world coherence, because FFS, wizards have been playing with this stuff for hundreds of years in the game world, so why haven’t they all thought of all this crap that your 5 man gaming group came up with in an hour?
For these really nasty tombs, I’ve always thought any sensible adventurer would hire sappers to build tunnels under them, and pack them loosely with straw soaked in kerosene. Then you just light 'er up, let the whole thing collapse and stand near by to soak up the XP.
Back in 1st Ed, when invisibility was permanent if you didn’t attack anything: when you’re building your wizard’s tower, cast Invisibility on the occasional building stone for a weather-, draft- and intruder-proof window.
One goofy wizard/cleric used way too many darkness & silence spells, ostensibly to keep the bad guys from hurting her friends. The party kept getting stuck fighting in darkness and found that they were the only people with good enough stats to hit party members in total darkness… so when the monk and the ranger got stuck in a silent darkness field, they almost killed each other before they figured out who they were fighting.
So, the other casters in the party took to carrying around a small coin purse with a dozen or so pennies, each with Continual Light cast on them. Whenever Ariadne dropped a darkness field, it was gone within one round.
That party had Way Too Many Mages. They were all invisible, all the time. They cast Invisibility on a rope so it couldn’t be seen; they’d always walk on the right side of the hallway, holding onto the rope. Whoever needed to run up to the front and attack the monster would let go of the rope and run up the left side.
Turns out that giant, rolling rocks don’t care much whether or not you’re invisible.
Sure, but a hill, platform, magic, or simply having the archers slightly off to the side acting as the skirmishers that they were in real life works just peachy.
I guess the theory is that the wagon is a single object, but then you’re just chucking the container and the arrows are along for the ride (and being pushed up against the back of said wagon as the wagon accelerates). So at the end of the day you’re just whacking said demigod with, at most, 375-lbs worth of wagon for 15d6 damage.
I read the “wagon full of arrows becomes thousands of projectiles” as having fallen prey to the traditional lack of grammar skills which plagued the 1st edition editors (and readers…). I could imagine my gaming friends putting an implied “or” between the two statements: You can hurl one object or creature per level OR You can hurl up to 25 pounds per caster level.
My response would be (if they absolutely insisted on this reading): “The next paragraph starts with ‘You must succeed on attack rolls (one per creature or object thrown).’ Start rolling, let me know when you’re done, how many hit, how many crit, and how much damage. Oh, and, let me know how many times you fumble, too.”
In the campaign with Too Many Mages, they were each running two PC’s. They simplified some of the marching order by buffing the bejesus out of the monk and the dual-wielding elf and having them hop into a time-stop Bag of Holding. The cleric carrying the bag had the responsibility on round 1: Open the Bag.
“I whip out my Rod of Reach and summon a Huge Treant from max range”
“OK, on which squares ?”
“These ones <pointing to square occupied by enemy>”
“You can’t, there’s alreay someone there”
“Not 100 feet up there ain’t. Timbeeeer !”
Don’t do this with a druid in the party though. They don’t find it as funny.
(aka the dwarf)